By CRISTINA DEL MAR QUILES

Con­sid­er­ing the pro­posed HR 2499 “an out­rage, an insult and a joke to the peo­ple of Puerto Rico,” the Puerto Rican Inde­pen­dence Party said Sun­day it would not col­lab­o­rate to get it approved.   “We decided to denounce and com­bat the abuse, both in Puerto Rico and inter­na­tion­ally, with a rea­son­able pro­posal that fits all the inter­ests involved to address this abuse by the U.S. Con­gress,” PIP Pres­i­dent Rubén Berríos Martínez said.
The PIP’s pro­posal calls for hold­ing a ref­er­en­dum through which Puerto Ricans would require and demand that the U.S. Con­gress ful­fill its oblig­a­tion to decol­o­nize the island, the for­mer sen­a­tor said.
On the same day of the vote, there would be a sec­ond bal­lot for vot­ers to choose between a con­sti­tu­tional assem­bly or a plebiscite as mech­a­nism to sub­mit pro­pos­als for decol­o­niza­tion.
This pro­posal is aimed mainly at the lead­er­ship of the gov­ern­ing New Pro­gres­sive Party and its main polit­i­cal chal­lenger the Pop­u­lar Demo­c­ra­tic Party, Berríos Martínez said.
“In the case that they do not accept our pro­posal and were to hold the sham plebiscite that has been announced, the PIP would con­duct a col­lab­o­ra­tive non-militant cam­paign using all its resources, both nation­ally and inter­na­tion­ally,” Berríos Martínez, leader of the Social­ist Inter­na­tional move­ment, said.
At the appro­pri­ate time, the PIP will begin con­tact­ing var­i­ous sec­tors of the island that believe in decol­o­niza­tion to coör­di­nate efforts and carry out a pub­lic cam­paign of non-coöperation with the bill being stud­ied in Con­gress, he said.
“If the lead­er­ship of the PDP and the NPP respond to the insult and affront to the dig­nity of our peo­ple by work­ing together [to get HR 2499 passed], they will have to do it alone and on their knees,” Berríos Martínez said.
The PIP has pre­vi­ously been involved in other sta­tus votes in which inde­pen­dence was among the sta­tus options.
In the opin­ion of the mem­bers of the PIP, HR 2499 — being pushed by Res­i­dent Com­mis­sioner Pedro Pier­luisi — does not advance the decol­o­niza­tion and inde­pen­dence of Puerto Rico.
“Puerto Ricans can not col­lab­o­rate. We can not be accom­plices, and we must con­demn and com­bat this colo­nial­ist hoax by the U. S. Con­gress,” he said, while propos­ing “fac­ing this Con­gres­sional move [with] a course of action, a response that is wor­thy of our people.”